Control Review: Rambo Last Blood

I, Dalton Lewis, saw the last Rambo movie the other day, and boy did Rambo fight a lot of people. I remember when I was a kid I watched the original Rambo and told my mom how great it was that an action movie had an actual plot and characters and problems. She responded by cynically saying that it was an ultra-conservative story about killing people.

Is that right? Is Rambo about being a scrappy militia person, hiding out and defending the military and hating the authority figures and the asshole bad guys? I don’t know if Rambo has to be hated by a liberal. Liberals hate conservative stories, right? Conservatives hate liberal stories and liberal media, right? I disagree. I say that I — a liberal — can enjoy Rambo fighting a lot of scary bad people.

Those people are mostly Mexican people in this movie — which is fine. A positive Mexican role model exists in the film, and the bad guys are bad guys, not Mexican stereotypes. They are smart, hardworking sex traffickers. Allegations of xenophobia and racism are not necessarily valid in this case: there are bad guy sex traffickers anywhere and benevolent Latino characters here. People can be bad guys of any types.

Is this the best movie of the year? Who cares? If you want to see a red-blooded American kill a whole lot of bad guys in disgusting and powerful ways then you want to see this movie. If you want people in parlor rooms talking about their feelings you should see Downton Abbey instead — I haven’t seen it but expect there are a lot of parlor rooms and a lot of emotions.

The plot revolves around a niece-like figure who wants to find her biological father even though Rambo was the father figure who was there for her. She goes down to Mexico, and bad things happen to her and the plot causes much trouble for her. Rambo has to go down to Mexico to look for her and finds much violence there.

American culture rewards people who fight for themselves and sit around in bunkers readying for an apocalypse or for enemies of the country. I don’t mind that. I want to see people proud of our country, defending it with everything that they have. I don’t care if such people vote differently than me and have some different values than me. They are still proud American citizens, and I am proud of that. John Rambo is a character much like those citizens, and I am proud of him. If you want to see him try to kill a fuckton of bad guys, then, well, this movie is for you.

Thanks, and take care, friends.